reciprocal inhibition
- noun
- /rɪˈsɪprəkl ɪnˈhɪbɪʃən/
- Specialized
:
inhibición recíproca
- Using reciprocal inhibition, a therapist can help clients relax by encouraging them to visualize peaceful scenes that counteract their anxiety.
Examples
-
In the course of behavior therapy programs—flooding, reciprocal inhibition, and so forth.
Academic text (1990) -
What I am attempting to describe here, then, is, in Martin Buber's words, "the sphere of 'between'." It is not to be understood, therefore, in the language and concepts of the behaviorists, that is, in terms of conditioned responses, reciprocal inhibition, and so on.
Academic text (1990) -
In behavioral therapy, reciprocal inhibition is often applied to promote calmness and diminish clients' fearful reactions.
-
To manage his stress, he practiced reciprocal inhibition by engaging in deep breathing exercises when feeling anxious.
Synonyms
A treatment that teaches people to relax to reduce anxiety in scary situations
A therapy method that teaches a calm response instead of fear to something
A therapy method that replaces an unwanted reaction with a positive one
Surface Forms
Morphology
The components 'reciprocal' (mutual) and 'inhibition' (suppression) transparently combine to the core idea of mutual suppression or one response suppressing another, so a learner who knows the words can grasp the basic concept. However, the specific technical/therapeutic sense — that one deliberately elicited response is used to inhibit an incompatible response — and its procedural nuance are specialized and not fully predictable for a B1 learner without prior exposure, so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Reciprocal inhibition comes from a simple image of two opposite actions that affect one another: reciprocal means 'each other' and inhibition means 'to stop'. In therapy, a calm action (like relaxation) is used to 'stop' the opposite action (like anxiety), so the phrase means using one, incompatible response to block another.
